Watts said the findings are broadly contrived and based on a methodology and data that is not statistically valid.

"These two findings are completely unrelated, and cannot be compared," Watts said.

"Nucleus compares return on equity (ROE) by company, as provided by Bloomberg.com, with ROE industry averages from Hoovers and these are unrelated sources of data. Without access to the sources, proper screening and definition are not likely to occur and the Nucleus sample size represents 0.0026 of SAP's total customer base.

"Nucleus has a history of selecting topics and vendor targets to promote itself and its sensational findings in the market. As the market leader, SAP is a target of Nucleus' quick, cheap research for the eighth time."

Neal Rodgerson, national distribution manager for Orica, said an ERP platform is just a system and does not drive business strategy or profitability. Orica uses SAP extensively throughout the organization and Rodgerson said it was deployed because of flexibility.